


this cup is fully biodegradeable and sourced from 100% renewable materials

by extryn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Afghanistan, Angst, Frottage, Implied Relationships, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, PTSD, Secret Relationship, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just coffee, a little biscuit on the side sometimes, or a pastry if it's been an especially hard week. That he's made the time for it between cases, twice a week for the past month, doesn't mean it ought to matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this cup is fully biodegradeable and sourced from 100% renewable materials

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a very dear friend of mine who requested something short on this pairing. If you dig a little, there's some Sherlock/John in there and it probably works best like that. Takes place sometime shortly after A Study in Pink.

He hasn't told Sherlock about the coffee yet. It's none of his damned business anyway, what he does outside of 221B and their peculiar little life, who he spends his lunches or dates or nights with. It's just coffee, a little biscuit on the side sometimes, or a pastry if it's been an especially hard week. That he's made the time for it between cases, twice a week for the past month, doesn't mean it ought to matter. London never quite chased the military man from him.

But it does, doesn't it? Enough he comes home with the shopping and not the bill. It's his one slice of normality and he won't let Sherlock pry his way into that, turn it upside down the way everything else has gone. He doesn't know which way is up but this is the light shining through the surface and giving him hope that soon he'll be able to breathe again.

Sometimes they chat about the weather, the paper, the telly; it's useless and they both know it. They've both been stained and twisted beyond repair to the point where every day is another battlefield, the idle chit-chat some attempt to normalise the gutted wrecks of the wider world into something small and familiar. John still remembers how old Max and Janet must be by now, their favourite foods, but the face of their father is lost to the sticky brown of his blood soaking the dirt. Sherlock is...Sherlock, but this makes him feel almost human.

Nothing really changes at all. That's just the way John likes it, he doesn't need... _this_ , to be any more hectic. He spends more time with Sherlock who he can't seem to settle, rocketing around, sulking, moping, exploding, running, annoying like a small child. Some bond is growing between them, like squabbling siblings, except when it's not. He relishes the quiet times, the laughter that sounds like things can still be joyful in that carefree way Sherlock's laugh only is around him, the breathless grins after a case. But Sherlock is flighty and just as likely to cast some acerbic, invasive judgement upon him as his lips are to twitch in some alien hesitation when John comes around and surprises him. He needs something to ground him, something that doesn't disappear at weird hours of the night and need feeding when it sits in the same spot for days on end, something that notices when he treks halfway across London with severed digits in an ice box.

Greg's smile is genuine when he hands him a steaming paper cup of coffee in the morning. In that one moment, Greg's world is just that simple gesture of thought, Greg's attention is his entirely honestly. Somehow it makes him feel real.

Sherlock is tetchier than usual when it happens, so against his better judgement John offers for him to come along. He doesn't take to the prospect of going over case files and heads to the morgue instead, and it's Donovan's day off, so John ends up alone in Greg's house, nestled in his sofa with a mug of cocoa and reams of autopsy data. John isn't much help, not without Sherlock to analyse the information he can provide, but Greg accommodates him with what he is only just comfortable terming as their friendship.

He isn't sure how they end up kissing, frenzied at first like they're gasping air instead of lips and then slow and soft like neither of them are going to grow old, or die, or haven't the time to waste doing it. It probably starts with Greg's eyes, gentle, brown and imploring, his hand a comforting weight on John's shoulder. It ends with them undressing wordlessly, shuffling clothes the bare minimum needed until they can rub off on each other like a pair of boys, John in the crease of Greg's thigh, Greg rocking wetly against his hip.

It's good. Surprisingly good. It's just a little bit mad in exactly the way he's sure Sherlock can never be, which is of course the way he didn't realise he needed so much. Greg holds him close, sprawled on the sofa, sweaty and trembling with unexpected exertion as they both let out nervous laughter and the ground comes rushing up to meet them.

'So,' Greg says after, his eyes glinting, 'That was…'

John chuckles, just a little. They never do figure out how to describe it, not the second time, they give up by the third. It just happens, sometimes, rarely with any less surprise than the first. When he trudges back to Sherlock he feels a part of the lights and the sounds, some lesser world of secret corporate affairs he's happy to sink into for a while.

Nothing really changes at all. Sherlock is Sherlock, and serves him as the perfect diversion even if he can never quite keep up for it to work, and Greg is thankfully no part of that world, no smiles over lolling corpses, which is the way he likes it. The coffee dates become walks, turn to parks, feeding ducks and little smiles, kisses under trees; senseless, aimless things but he can pretend he's a part of this thing. It's surely not madness if they both believe it.

Sherlock goes through a manic period that Mrs Hudson is really the true victim of. He's never home, and when he is a wake of destruction notably worse than the regular kind follows him. He disappears for longer and longer periods until John demands to accompany him to make sure the bloody idiot doesn't end up in a ditch (it scares him more than it should), but the calm doesn't last. It's overtaken by a kind of saturnine listlessness where he lies about, snaps at John and any of his visitors, has peculiar spells of paranoia. John tries to distance himself from it but he's suffering the longer it goes on, everybody is, because he really can't keep Sherlock from his thoughts for long. Talking is no use at all.

It doesn't stop him trying to get through to Sherlock, first through the regular methods of diplomacy but it all ends in shouting matches that leave them both sullen for days. Greg rings, once, in the middle of one of these and John hates himself for how quickly he wants to relax into that small oasis on the other end of the line.

Sherlock's lips clamp shut at the sight, even the first word he speaks into the phone, and he tries to tell himself he really had no idea at all.


End file.
